Idol Threat
by Neo the Saiyan angel
Summary: Monkey Fist wasn't one to put any worth in birthdays. Thus he was quite annoyed when his monkey ninjas tried to throw him one. The decorations were pathetic, the mess headache-inducing. What he didn't realize was the danger that came in the form of a toy.
1. Chapter 1

Monkey Fist never cared much about dates on a calendar, even when he was a child. Each day was the same as every other day in terms of meaning. Humans attached the concept of worth to each day like it actually made them special. Anniversaries? Holidays? Birthdays? All worthless. The only thing calendar-related that held any significance were the various stages of the moon and placement of stars, the things that governed the spiritual frame of the universe.

Hence he woke up treating this day as any other. It was another day that held no significance. His parents, if they were alive, would have insisted he at least sit with them and have a spot of tea and perhaps open a token present of some sort. That was probably the only thankful thing that came of their demise. Finally being able to drop the pathetic façade of actually caring about things that didn't matter.

He did his stretches, pondering how to spend the day. There were a few leads he had picked up on an ancient power, one that opposed the Mystical Monkey Power. Monty had grown frustrated with The Pretender constantly getting in his way—even daring to keep him from learning the name of the ultimate monkey weapon. Finding this other power would certainly tip the scales in his favor.

On the other hand, he was starting to find that his monkey ninjas were lacking the discipline that they had back when he first trained them. Before he was able to command them just through the way he tensed the muscles on his body. Now they were taking on…unworthy characteristics. He'd even walked in on them watching some of that woman, Opera, making a terrible racket over some poor abused housewife.

He decided to continue pondering the choices, measuring the pros and cons, while he ate his breakfast. It wouldn't do much good for him to skip out on eating something while he wasn't consumed in scrolls. Thus he made his way to the sizeable kitchen that existed in his manor.

The sight that greeted him was one that would have continued to make him flinch even weeks later.

The kitchen was covered in various mismatched streamers. It looked like a spider that produced multicolored webbing had attempted to make a nest for itself. Attempt was the major word since most of them ended up jumbled together in various knots. Even as agile as he was Monkey Fist wasn't sure he could make it through the mess.

The countertops and the island that served more space seemed to have something explode all over them. Bits of what appeared to be dough and various wisps of white fluff were splattered everywhere. Including the ceiling. He was loathe to even wonder how old some of the ingredients were considering how neither he nor the monkeys ever cooked and there were small flour beetles crawling around.

And across from the doorway letters spelling out 'Haqqee Birhdey' that appeared to be stuck to the wall with a crusty brownish substance.

Ah yes. This was the gentle yet, as of late, unwelcome tap of destiny telling him what he should do.

"MONKEY NINJAS! ASSEMBLE IN FRONT OF ME **NOW**!" Monkey Fist shouted much louder than he needed to.

In mere moments his entire troupe was lined in front of him. It didn't pertain to their skill, the Englishman mentally snorted. They had been hiding themselves in the kitchen, apparently waiting for him to walk in. It was nearly disgusting that they were unable to hear or sense his approach, seeing as he was taking no effort to hide himself.

"What," he snarled as he waved a hand across the kitchen, "is the meaning of this?"

Kiki, one of the more reckless members of the group, gave a few halting ooks.

"A party? You're throwing me a birthday party?" He should have known his parents would reach out beyond the grave to get something to throw him a party. "I'm assuming you tried baking, hence the mess."

Another one of his ninja minions, Jojo, answered this time.

"You ate the cake," he stated flatly. "You were throwing me a surprise party and you ate the cake before I even got here." Kiki began to give an apology which he waved off. "Don't. I'm fairly certain I've told you all more than a few times that I _despise_ events like this. I suppose you got me presents as well," Monty added sarcastically. It wasn't even an eyeblink later that there were a handful of wrapped packages being held out in front of him. "…charming."

He turned to go to his study if just to try and get his mind off of this madness before he made his monkey ninjas clean up the mess when he found his path blocked by those very monkeys.

"What is it?" their master snapped.

Chippy scuffed his foot against the ground as he held out the present he had once more. The other two that had presents held them up as well.

"You have got to be kidding me." The lord sighed as he signaled for them to follow him into the dining room. Considering all the effort they had put into doing this he knew that they would passively aggressively ignore his commands like they had when he refused to give them any vacation time if he denied their attempts to acknowledge his day of birth. It was best to just simply go with it for now and make them work it off later in training sessions.

As he walked into the dusty, underused room Monty waved at them to take a seat. Naturally, he sat at the head of the table where he was met with the three oddly shaped packages. Nearly all the seats ended up occupied as his minions sat in great anticipation.

The first package he instantly recognized. "Couldn't you have gotten your own presents instead of giving me my own things?" he grunted as he tore the paper off of what he was sure was one of his books. Sure enough, the etched picture of a monkey posed mid-jump and words in a long dead language stating that it was the book of simian power greeted him.

"I thought it was a good present!" a male, Jumbo, chattered defensively.

"The concept of a present seems to have eluded you," Monkey Fist said dryly. The next present, a large lumpy package, he tore open without preamble. "And of course. Bananas." He was sure he had just bought this batch from the store yesterday.

Bored, he lacklusterly pushed the last item over before he slammed his head into the table. Mid-thump, he heard a faint tinkle come from the package. "Hm?" Strange. He didn't have anything that would make a noise like that save for his fine glassware and he had made sure his ninjas knew to never touch them.

He picked it up with care and began to unwrap it. They knew better than to touch his finer pieces. If they had there would be punishment training on top of the usual training.

Once he had unwrapped the item, he wasn't entirely sure what to make of it. It filled him with complete revulsion…yet he had the strange feeling that it would be a good idea to wind it up. Curious.

"I realize I like most monkey-themed items, especially those of an antique nature," Monty said, "but this isn't exactly what I look for when I think 'monkey artifacts'." He poked one of the cymbals of the little monkey toy that he had unwrapped. The toy seemed to stir a faint memory, most likely from his childhood. Much too faint to even focus on. "What, pray tell, made you think that I would like this?"

Chippy spoke up this time.

"And you actually believed the old gypsy woman that sold you this?" he scoffed at Chippy, who looked more than a little disappointed. "I thought I had taught you better. _Never_ believe the old gypsy types. There's a reason they bear the reputation of tricking people out of their money." To emphasize the point and satisfy the unreasonable desire to make it work, he wound the little circus monkey up enough to have it bang its cymbals together once. "Now does this seem like a cursed item to you?"

"No," the entire group ooked in reply.

"Good. Now that we have learned this lesson," the lord said as he stood up from the table, "you may go ahead and clean up the mess you made in the kitchen."

None of the group hesitated to rush to the kitchen. Monkey Fist, feeling exasperated from the experience, picked up the bunch of bananas that had been wrapped up and began heading to the kitchen with them. He snagged a couple of the yellow fruits from the bundle as he went, planning to snack on them later.

When he arrived in the kitchen, he was pleased to see his ninjas hard at work cleaning up their mess. He rehung the bananas from their hook in the kitchen and had turned to leave when he heard the faint chinging of the monkey toy's cymbals. Annoyed at one of the ninjas shirking their duties, Monty took a count of the monkeys present in the kitchen.

Odd. All were present and accounted for. The toy must just be a defect. It wasn't unheard of, especially the ones from disreputable sources. Taking one more look around and noting that the monkeys were making good progress—the only flour beetles that were left were the dead ones, most of the brownish substance on the walls was scrubbed away, and the island was at least close to spotless—he went to retire to his little dojo until they were ready for practice.

* * *

**A/N:**

_Here's something I thought of and decided to try and write out for MF Appreciation Day. I doubt I'm managing to capture his voice or mannerisms, but I'm trying my best. Hope the MF fans like it. Not a one-chapter story.  
_

_Thanks to **kgs-wy** for taking a look at this before I started posting.  
_


	2. Chapter 2

The beginning was a subtle, creeping hand that was so smooth in its task that no one noticed anything but the fruits of its labor. Including the great simian ninja himself.

Monkey Fist didn't give another spare thought to the fiasco his minions had created that morning save for making them train harder than usual that afternoon. He had expected them to clean everything, including put his book back where they found it and toss that worthless toy in the garbage. It was bad enough that they were becoming layabouts. He wasn't about to let them start hoarding junk as well.

Much to his ever-growing pile of annoyance, his examination of their cleaning attempt discovered that it was below average. There were a few dead bugs laying about in the remaining drifts of flour on the floor and, to his utter amazement, a dead rat lying just inside the pantry, seeming to have either choked to death or died of poisoning on some of the splatterings of cake batter. How cake batter got into the pantry he wasn't about to venture a guess; all he knew was that he was glad he hadn't sampled any of the cake his troupe had created and devoured.

Entering the larger hallway he had converted to a training area for his ninja monkeys, Monty took a quick look around to see if they'd been at least keeping up with their regular chores. He did not mind lesser-used rooms being left to gather dust, but seeing as how this was _the_ room the ninjas were to use it was not allowable to have standards slack. That was why Bubba, what most would consider his second-in-command, was in charge of this room. That combined with the fact that this was the ninja's training area made it doubly galling that there were varying layers of dust on several pieces of equipment.

Did his monkey ninjas ever train between missions? He'd always assumed they did, seeing as how there wasn't too much else to do at the manor and, well, they were _monkey ninjas_. It wasn't like they could simply go out to town and have a blast at the local nightclub. But now Monkey Fist saw that his assumptions certainly made him look simply meant that the training session was more important than ever: to ensure his troupe was keeping their standards up to his own.

'_And_' Monty noted with some minor aggression as he rang the dust-caked gong in the corner of the hall to call the monkeys to him '_the importance of cleanliness will be emphasized as well_'

The monkey ninjas were very resistant to the extra training he had them do, save for Bubba and, curiously, the free-spirited Kiki. It just reinforced the fact that he needed to crack the whip a bit harder, make sure they _knew_ he wouldn't tolerate any slack. Thus he did just that, making them do an extra set of _kata_ and added a half-hour of sparring with each other. He bore witness to their lackadaisical attitude, the sparring looking more like a poorly organized dance routine than anything else. He snarled to himself; their lollygagging was likely why they kept losing to The Pretender, the redheaded wannabe hero, and the bald pet!

It was disgusting for him to find them all much worse for wear by the end.

"Don't _any_ of you do extra training outside of our usual bouts?" Monty asked incredulously.

"I've been practicing how to drive!" Kiki cried from the back. He waited an extra few seconds, a frown settling on his face.

"That's it? Practicing driving? You're all highly-trained monkey ninjas! What else could you actually be doing besides training?" he snarled, verbalizing his confused ponderings from earlier.

"I look in your books at all the pictures. They're pretty," ooked Missy.

"I bird watch. You never know when you'll see an interesting breed making a nest nearby," Bubba answered quietly, "And you said it was good that I do my carving, Master."

"I try to keep the place clean. But so much junk!" Jumbo shrieked.

Most of the rest shrugged, not really having an excuse or hobby.

"So you all just sit around watching the telly?" A large portion of the monkeys looked at each other and slowly nodded. All but two agreed by the end that they watched television a lot. "Well then." Monkey Fist drew himself up to his full height, asserting his dominance. "I think that we'll have to step things up then considering you have the time to cry about that accursed woman that does the talk show."

"You leave Opera out of this!" Missy screeched. The Englishman leapt over the group, behind the female monkey.

"What was that?" Monty snarled as he bent down, his teeth bared at the impulsive little monkey in warning. She cowered away from his display. Eventually Missy bowed to him, apologizing for the outburst. "Just as I thought." He stood up straight and walked back to the front of the group. "For this reason—the growing rebelliousness, the lack of discipline—I expect all of you to be back in this room at 5am sharp!"

He heard some grumblings of discontent. A quick snort and narrowing of the eyes took care of that. Monty wasn't as harsh as he could be. Not out of fear for his subordinates; Monty could easily take all of them on at once and still have the focus to balance a teapot on his head. It was more because they were much easier to work with when governed by emotions other than terror at what he might do to them and that, for all intents and purposes, they were his compatriots and loyal minions.

"Is that 5am in the Uniform time zone, Master?" Bubba chirped hopefully, his eyes straying to the staircase near the hall where Bubba's prized carvings usually found a home.

"_No!_" Monkey Fist growled. "We are not running on an American timeline. 5am. This timezone. This castle. _This room_." The lord was too annoyed with his minions to even dismiss them. He simply sighed as he walked out of the room, heading back to the study to continue his research.

Was it really just a couple of years before that he had been so excited about his newly-trained monkey ninjas? It was hard to believe, really. He hadn't realized how naive he had been. Of course things couldn't have gone the way he had wanted. His main adversary was a bumbling adolescent. The universe was cruel like that.

A series of screeches could be heard behind him, cries of joy and anger…and was that a ding? His minions must have gotten into his lesser collection of historical artifacts; he distinctly remembered having a little bell from the Carpathian mountain range, theorized to have belonged to merchants making their way to India, which had just returned from a trip to a scholar in Russia. While he held no value in it he found it unsettling that even after the speech he just gave them they would still seek to toy with his things.

So caught up in his thoughts on their possible betrayal was he that he didn't even notice when the cries turned to screeches of terror. All he recognized was that they were still making that blasted noise while playing with what was likely one of his artifacts.

He would put a stop to that.

Turning about-face, Monty practically stomped his way back into the training room. The sight that he beheld drove rage through his body and a shudder of anguish into his heart. There, in the center of the room, was Bubba. He was impaled through the mouth by a spear, the weapon bursting out the middle of his back to be embedded in the floor.

He knew that spear. It was one he'd found in the outer reaches of Mongolia, near the Chinese border. Supposedly a weapon wielded by Genghis Khan himself, legend declared it to be imbued with mystical power indirectly related to the Mystical Monkey Power. He had retrieved it early on, when the Mystical Monkey Power was flowing powerfully through his veins.

Oh, it was mystical; he could feel it. But it most certainly had no connection to the Mystical Monkey Power. He had been unable to harness it in the least, a large tell that it was not related to that power; after all, he had - however briefly - been able to command the legendary Lotus Blade, something only masters of the Mystical Monkey Power could do.

Even so, it had still been a weapon, one that was quite beautiful in its simplistic craftsmanship. The haft was an age darkened, and use-smoothed hardwood just over two meters long, and the head was deadly sharp, over a quarter meter long, wrought from the remains of a nickel-iron meteorite. That very head was now sunk deeply into the hardwood floor.

He rushed over, resisting the urge to cry out in case his follower was still alive. Bubba was one of the few monkeys he respected, despite how he lorded over them, and the first of his monkeys to bow to him as their sensei. In his intense loyalty, Bubba would have likely still attempted to bow to him or otherwise show acknowledgement of his master even in the state he was in.

Monkey Fist examined his follower closely, almost feeling relief that his faithful servant was obviously dead. There was no chance the monkey ninja, or nearly any animal for that matter, could have lived long with an injury such as this anyway; anything beyond instant death would have been an unnecessary agony and it took the need for his master to commit a mercy kill away.

Monty spun around, looking for the others with a furious gaze. This horrid result was likely due to their antics! One of them showboating with his prized spear and accidentally skewing poor Bubba nearly end to end. Oh, he would _most certainly_ punish the one responsible...

He spotted one of his disciples, and almost immediately his temper cooled to a simmering bubble from the boiling rage it had been moments before. "Kiki..." Monty grated. "What. Happened?"

Kiki looked over at him, her eyes crinkled in the most piteous grief a monkey could produce. It was all Monty needed to know that the rebellious monkey before him had been...involved, for lack of a better word, with one of his loyalist servants despite the strict orders that the monkey ninjas should avoid such relations. And now she'd seen her paramour, and potential mate, impaled in their training room.

If the situation weren't so serious and confusing, Monty would have likely immediately called an animal psychiatrist. Most were wastes, but the one that loathsome geneticist had recommended was actually worth his time and resources. But that would be for another time.

After working her mouth for a moment, she finally ooked and hooted an answer to him. "We... I mean, Bubba and I were trying to convince the others that your duties and chores would be fun. I know it was punishment, but we had to try since many saw the tasks as unnecessary. Then..." Horror began to leak into her voice as she began recalling events barely a minute old. "I can't be sure of what happened in the beginning. We were all talking, you see, and didn't think much on the little noises. I think there was a small thud from upstairs, then a scraping of wood on wood before a heavier thud. We all saw it, then. It looked almost like it was flying with magic! Then it slid down the banister, hit Bubba's carving and flew up. It...it was going to hit Bobo." Her gaze shifted to the now-dead monkey as she continued. "Bubba pushed him away, and...and..." Monkey Fist motioned for her to stop, for he knew if she were pushed too hard too soon she may simply break.

Even to the end, Bubba was a leader; Bobo was a youngster, relatively new to the troupe, and thus the responsibility of his superiors. But no. Even if it had been himself in the situation, he somehow knew Bubba would have...

"Where were the others?" Monty rasped, doing his best to ignore his emotions. Kiki threw herself on the floor in grief and supplication, hoping to stay a wrath which was not aimed at her. "Playing with 'toys', I suppose? I heard a bell sound. Were they monkeying around with my artifacts, such as the spear? Tossed something which broke the wood and knocked it off its pedestal?" Curiously, he thought for a moment on why he had heard nothing else but quickly found his attention diverted to his servant.

"All were here on the floor until the spear fell, Master!" she begged his belief. "And there was barely a scraping of noise over our arguing. We barely heard the spear hit the banister before it flew and slid to hit...Bubba..."

Monty growled at the logical fallacy - after all, this certainly did not happen on its own! - and stalked over to the banister across the hallway leading to the upper floor. The bottom of the banister was capped with a stone monkey head. A head that, ironically, Bubba had carved, which now had a huge chunk cut out of it.

Along the length of the fluted banister were several gouges where the spear had obviously slid down. He walked up the stairs and beheld the shattered remnants of the case that had held the spear for years. The wall-mounted case lay broken on the floor with only a small section still hanging.

A majority of the box's remains were right next to the wall, but there was a line of broken bits that showed the spear had been flung from the wall and up onto to the banister. Monty thought on it for a minute, slowly nodding his head as he followed the debris. It began to make sense to both the scientist in his mind and the enraged sensei to the deceased Bubba. After all, the wooden haft, despite being almost five centimeters thick, _was_ flexible.

The case was wooden, ornately designed with an interlocking herringbone design. It was also nearly two hundred years old, and it seemed to have had a weakness in some of the glue holding the frame together. It was also very, very heavy, weighing almost one hundred kilograms empty.

One side of the case had broken off in such a way as to drop the base of the haft onto the floor, the weight of the rest of the case bending the spear. The mystically sharp blade had cut through the wooden parts that were left, flinging the spear above the banister, and the flute cut down the center of the banister's top had allowed the shaft so slide down like a train on its rails. Then it had hit the ornately carved monkey head and been launched into the air, arcing into the training area. While it had been about to spear the unsuspecting Bobo through and through, Bubba had taken the spear in Bobo's stead.

"Kiki," Monty called, his voice eerily calm. She stood and bowed to him, and he swallowed more of his rage, sorrow taking its place. "I can see that this was..." he shuddered and swallowed his disbelief in the face of the evidence "An accident. You are _certain_ all of your fellows in the training room, on the ground floor?"

"Yes, Master!" Kiki cried, continuing to address him in a, for her, out of character title, which earned a tired, pained sigh from Monty.

"Very well." He turned from the remains of the case and walked back down to the training room, looking over Bubba's corpse. With a hard, yet careful yank, he pulled the spear from the floor, and carefully removed it from Bubba, attempting to lessen the damage. He schooled his mind and emotions, choosing to carry through the following tasks with as much dignity as his follower deserved. "Kiki, because of your relations with Bubba, you shall help me prepare his body for cremation. Have Chippy, Jumbo and Jojo choose three disciples each. Jumbo is the best at upkeep of of the floors and banisters, he shall choose those he thinks best to help him sand and restain the banisters, as well as fix the floor here. Chippy is best at cleaning stains, and should choose those similarly skilled that Jumbo does not. Jojo will clean up the case and any other help the other two need."

"Yes, Master, I'll tell them at once." Kiki bowed and hurried off. Monty carefully arranged Bubba's body, thankful that he had, somehow, kept his bowels and bladder even in death. _'You were always the bravest of my disciples. To an unfortunate fault, it seems_'

Kiki returned directly after he'd finished that thought, the others and their choices in tow. The rest of his horde of disciples was there as well, watching from the periphery. "If they need additional help, you will volunteer, understood?"

They all bowed, apparently as hurt by Bubba's death as Monty. "Go about your duties," Monty said curtly, then carefully picked up Bubba by his shoulders, Kiki grabbing the deceased monkey's legs. "Service for Bubba is in four hours. Be done by then, and after, we will observe mourning for the rest of the night, and through lunch tomorrow."

For once, the monkeys did not celebrate the lack of activities.

* * *

**Author's Notes**

_This story's now being co-authored with **kgs-wy**. We work well together, and he can write the stuff I stink at and vice-versa. Thanks to **Mengsk** and **Pharaoh Rutin Tutin** for doing the beta work! Hope y'all enjoy this chapter, where the mood whiplash hurts. The next, whenever it gets done, will not be any brighter._


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